Injury Updates - Red Sox

An unbelievable article I read weekly called Under The Knife by Will Carroll had a few Red Sox notes so I figured I would post it on the blog. Will Carroll is a doctor or sports medicine specialist or whatever that gets paid to write and let people know the deal with sports injuries. You need to pay to subscribe and I've heard from Gammons that every GM in baseball reads UTK. Anyway, here are the Sox paragraphs with Penny, Smoltz, and Youk. The news was good for Smoltz so just give the picture above a fist pound.

Boston's attempt to bring in some risky but talented pitchers didn't look like a good gamble earlier this spring, but now there's hope. Penny was not only able to get out onto the mound and throw well, he did it on a five-day schedule. His command and velocity both improved, and he had his fastball up into the mid-90s. There are still questions about how well Penny can hold up over a series of starts, but these positive steps give some indication that he could produce long enough to get Smoltz into the picture. Penny's next test will be on Monday when he's scheduled to throw again. If that goes well, he might be pitching against big-leaguers by the end of the week. Smoltz is continuing his rehab and looking toward a June return, though he could be up on a mound before the Sox head back to Boston. The toughest task Smoltz faces now might be maintaining his patience.

Red Sox fans continue to hate the Classic, but Youkilis came limping home on a play that could have just as easily happened in Ft. Myers as in Miami. In fact, Youkilis leaked that this had been going on pre-wbc, the kind of candor we don't normally get from Boston. The Sox were being very careful, and had him undergo an MRI to determine the extent of the damage. Sources tell me that Youkilis' ankle is "ugly on the outside, but not so bad on the inside." The early word is that he's likely to miss a week to ten days, and that he'll be ready for Opening Day, assuming of course that there are no setbacks in his rehab. Given that this is a chronic problem more than a traumatic one, there's little reason to believe he'll have any major problems in the short term, but the team is looking to make sure that Youkilis' admitted lack of self-awareness doesn't hurt him. Maybe Youkilis learned something from Chipper Jones.

-Wolfie